If that’s not good enough for you, try Similar:Meme unfairly blames "protesters" for four crimesA Facebook meme that claims “3 of these …CultureNational Mall site approved for memorial to fallen journalists Federal officials have approved a site…CultureMe loving my birthday truck, c. 1971. I adored this truck, and spellin…DesignShare a Coke with "Pepsi"AestheticsLet Me Explain…
While reviewing proposals for a new games journalism assignment in my video game culture and theory course, I found myself thinking about Floyd the Robot, from Planetfall. Some students were commenting excitedly about the emotional impact of the airport scene in Modern Warfare 2 (you are infiltrating a terrorist cell, and the game requires you…
What are thou, Pez, that must needs be dispensed? T’ be merely wrapped would leave thee so incensed? T’were better still to leave the fingers sticky, Than be vomited up by the likes of Mickey. — Mark Janello Curtis Allina, 87, Put Heads on Pez Dispensers Similar:8 (Short Halloween film by Josh Reardon)My daughter and…
What would be more awesome than a colorful display of iconic images from 100 beloved games? How about a colorful display of iconic images from 100 beloved games on cupcakes? Similar:The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class When it came time for me to make sugge…CultureAnti-globalism…
Looks like the rumors of an Apple tablet are creating ripples… the HP tablet apparently has two hinged screens, which seems to put it into the smartbook category. On Wednesday, Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft‘s chief executive, will unveil a novel take on a slate-type computer during his evening keynote at the Consumer Electronics trade show in…
Americans’ print consumption has declined since 1960, but words delivered by computer have more than made up the difference. (Image courtesy of the University of California at San Diego’s Global Information Industry Center) Conventional wisdom holds that YouTube, videogames, cable TV and iPods have turned us away from the written word. Glowing streams of visual…
I’ve just finished my final training run as a nanotech-augmented super-agent. Nasty terrorists holed up in the ruins of the State of Liberty have captured one of my fellow agents, and it’s my job to get him out. In real life, it’s 2002, and I’m just a guy in Wisconsin. My four-year-old son is asleep…
My online three-week course will start tomorrow morning. It will lean heavily on blogging, so chances are I’ll be a bit more productive than usual in that area. Video Game Culture and TheoryThis course isn’t about learning how to “win” a game, nor is it about programming or design. In fact, according to a recent…
Thanks, John, for sending me this link. Smart phones are great. But I’m not going to blog on my Blackberry. Reading texts from my mom is easy, but I’d rather not read a New Yorker story she emails to me on a 1.5”-by-1.5” screen. The ability of smart phones to do pretty much everything doesn’t…
It’s a spoof, but it’s well-researched and contains plenty of insight. Similar:News Feed FYI: Click-baitingIt’s hard for me to think of Facebook as…BusinessNellie Bly statue to be unveiled at Pittsburgh airport ThursdayIn 1889, Bly became famous for an-around…AwesomePhoto of William Crowther, 2012I just noticed that a few days ago, a Wi…CybercultureToilet paper isn't selling out…
The Jurupa Oak tree first sprouted into life when much of the world was still covered in glaciers. It has stood on its windswept hillside in southern California for at least 13,000 years, making it the oldest known living organism, according to a study published today. —Independent Reading this story reminded me of a story…
I canna give the furnace any more power! I hope the lithium crystals are still under warranty. Furnace.mp3 Similar:Crash site and Tower of Voices. Well worth the side trip on the way back from a weekend gi…Flight 93 crash site and Tower of Voices…CultureThings that have made me start singing "Tradition!" in my head so…
I just played this Every Day the Same Dream. Simple, stark, and in places charming. I smiled and thought a little. Similar:Plans for the Little Known Confederate HelicopterThe possibilities of combining Civil War…DesignLighten Up (an illustrator explores the racial politics of skin color in comics)Lighten Up — The Nib — Medium.Aesthetics"The face of the last…
I’m gearing up to teach Video Game Culture and Theory for the third time. It’s a 200-level elective, with no prerequisites. Students will have taken a basic comp course, but some won’t have done any academic research yet. I’m conscious that some students may have difficulty switching from playing the games they want to play,…
The first part of a walkthrough of the classic (1993), a moody, contemplative point-and-click adventure that defies the stereotype of games as violent and chaotic. Popular with women and causual gamers, but also appreciated by expert gamers for its puzzles and graphics (photo-realistic CGI, with pre-rendered animations), it was the top-selling game for nearly a…
Do students who report enjoying a teaching style actually learn more from that style? This study suggests that there may be an optimal teaching method for a given task, and that whether students like it or not, that optimal method does a better job teaching them. (As usual, beware of any new article with “may”…
Is this for real? On Christmas Day, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. —Amazon.com Hold on, though… who goes online to shop for more books on Dec 25, before the spines have been cracked on the new books that were under the tree? Amazon was heavily promoting its…
Fascinating student project from Zach Whalen’s “A Videogame Canon” course. Adventure. Rules, Representation, and Meaning in Colossal Cave Adventure Analysis of Colossal Cave Adventure Social Impact Colossal Cave Adventure as an interactive narrative and similarites [sic] to fictional novels Other projects include coverage of PONG, Half-Life, and Super Mario Kart. Similar:A college tells faculty it's…
I’ve re-set and cleansed my psyche a bit over the last week or so, delving into a little visual and spatial creativity, rather than the reading and writing (and marking) that I’ve been doing for the previous few weeks. While his face is still cartoony, the craggy eyes, puffy cheeks, and red nose all required…
The Baltimore Sun is offering a year’s subscription to its weekend papers for one cent, in an effort to boost circulation numbers and attract more advertising revenue. Even if you only want the coupons from the advertising flyers, it sounds like a great deal. “But,” my brother-in-law, Robert Frezza, writes, “I would be killing trees.” …